Reviews

Isekai Shokudou is shockingly, relentlessly boring. There's a mundane, quiet restaurant; it has a magic portal that's branches out to a bunch of corresponding portals in a sword and sorcery fantasy world. A rotating cast of fantasy guest characters come through the door. They eat food and then leave. Back in fantasy isekai land, they do have stuff going on; this is explained through direct narration or maybe some clumsy expository dialogue. But it's just back story. The restaurant visit does nothing at all to resolve the off-screen tension (except in one case where the guy's big problem was... he hadn't eaten in a while.) They enter, order, eat, enjoy, and leave. That's it.

I want to be crystal clear about this because weeb apologists may think I'm just bored with slice-of-life drama, or a show about cooking, and wanted to see violence and strife. No. I wanted to see any kind of conflict, problem, or question; and then I wanted to see how it was resolved, or how the attempts to resolve it failed, and how that led logically to new conflicts, problems, or questions. In other words I wanted something that conforms to the basic essentials of a dramatic presentation. But this show doesn't. It fundamentally violates the implicit pact between author and viewer because the author is an incompetent amateur web novel guy who has no idea what he's doing.

People, this is unacceptable. Stop enabling this kind of garbage. Yes, the author didn't understand his craft; yes the studio adapted a failed, forgettable web novel and shot it scene-for-scene instead of reworking it into an actual story. But the ultimate blame lies with the fans who swallow and even praise these unnecessary, failed projects. Go take a grade school English class. If you pay attention you'll understand why this isn't good storytelling. It isn't storytelling at all.